


Pre-Implementation Review

by I_ (Technomancer_vAI)



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Jarvis knows exactly whose side he's on, Just a bit of aeronautical drooling, Mostly Dialogue, Rhodey can tell exactly who programmed Jarvis, Snarky Jarvis, bad language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 12:02:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Technomancer_vAI/pseuds/I_
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Senate ceremony and the ensuing reception, Jarvis intends to have a little private chat with Colonel Jim Rhodes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pre-Implementation Review

**Author's Note:**

> One thing I've wanted to see explored - often, even so much as mentioned - is how much of a good sport and kind soul Tony is for putting up with his friends' repeated and willful episodes of The Dim™, and always taking them back afterward. Even when they've treated him like dirt, Tony Stark takes Rhodey and Pepper back. 
> 
> I wondered if someone outside this little friendship trio would see matters in another light.

"Take Colonel Rhodes back to Andrews, or wherever he wants to go, please."

"Very good, Mr. Stark. Always a pleasure to drive for you."

"And to ride with you. All the best, Henry."

"Sir."

"See ya, Rhodey."

"Stark."

The man walked across the concrete of the apron, the bounce draining out of him with every step. 

Jim watched him pause for a second at the bottom of the StarkJet's titanium-alloy boarding stairs, scarlet and gold suit case dangling from his right hand like dead weight, before he took a deep breath, straightened, and hauled himself up, and through, the dark maw of the open hatch and into the aircraft cabin, without ever looking back. 

A face appeared in the hatch, and Jim frowned at it, but it was only one of the crew, giving him a cool once over as the boarding stairs rose on their hydraulics and the jet's engines whined, spinning up toward their ignition rpm. The stairs thunked home into the fuselage, and metal scraped on metal as they were locked in place. One of the engines caught with a soft thump, and the muted, wavering howl of a well-maintained jet engine running at idle rolled through the whine of the other engine's starter, then complained gently around the effects of its pilot tinkering with its inlet settings. The other one caught, too, and the two jet engines sang with each other, weaving a rising duet of counter point, harmony, and finally laser-edged, howling unison while the pilot pre-flighted them, and the polished control surfaces of the plane waggled, and flashed, semaphores in the sunset light, and - 

His phone rang in his pocket.

Jim frowned, getting back in the car as he slid his finger over the phone's display to answer it.

"Sir?" The driver asked.

"Go," Jim directed, waving him off and settling in the leather seat, as the driver closed the door behind him, and went forward to get behind the wheel of the limo.

Out on the apron, the oscillating, Valkyrie song of the two jet engines crescendoed into a slicing, shrieking roar that seemed to claw apart reality itself for a surreal instant, before descending to a vicious, throbbing growl laced through with an insane, keening whistle - and Jim blinked at the tinted window.

Stark's jet was already rolling on the taxiway, headed for the flight line, fast, the setting sun flaring against the red and gold of the Double Eagle insignia above the N number on the empennage, and he gaped as he realized each one of the bird's feathers was a dark, jagged lightning bolt radiating from the brilliant blue-white sun set in its breast. 

When the fuck had Stark done that to his bird? And why? 

The pretentious little shit...

"Colonel Rhodes?"

Then the limo turned away from the runways, and he frowned at his cell phone in its Air-Force-Blue silicon case.

"Speaking. Who is this?"

"This is Mr. Stark's AI, Jarvis," the English accented voice informed him.

'Jarvis makes phone calls...? Oh, hell - of course Jarvis makes phone calls. He probably texts and twitters and face books and blogs and skews Google results for shits and giggles when Tony's out of town.'

"Well, you're a little too late, J. Tony's on his plane and taxiing for the runway."

"While the rented limo is taking you back to Andrews, or wherever else you might choose to go."

"Yeah. You'll have to call the plane to talk to Stark."

"I would, if I intended to speak to Mr. Stark, but, Mr. Stark is already asleep - 

"'Asleep'? The hell?"

"Mr. Stark is very seriously fatigued, and I wanted to speak to you, Colonel Rhodes."

"Um..."

"Privately."

Jim stared at the phone, wondering if it was going to look like the rabbit hole he'd apparently fallen down all of a sudden. Nope - still an iPhone.

"And why is that, Jarvis? Little early to start planning a surprise birthday bash for the Starkster next year, isn't it?"

"But not too early for a 'congratulations on your survival' party. Mr. Stark expected to be dead, now, after all."

"You called me because you want to throw him a party? Oh for God's sake - "

"I called to ask you a few questions, as I am attempting some research for my own edification. You brought up the idea of a party."

Jim frowned at nothing, as the limo eased to a stop at the gates to the private, secured Stark hangar complex. 

The driver put the window down, speaking to the guard at the gate. 

Somewhere, back there, in the direction of the runways, a jet roared triumph and contempt as it lanced into the sky, leaving the mundane earth and its pitiful gravity behind. The sound screamed away west, pounding down on the defeated earth, climbing the heights of heaven and headed for the sunset, invincible in flight.

Stark's funky little jet. 

Nothing else on the planet had engines that sounded like that.

'Don't get yourself tagged with a noise violation over the continental US, idiot,' he jibed to himself. 'Might want to get a look at that bird one day. Sometimes the flight plans the Starkster files don't make sense for a corporate - '

"Ah. That would be Mr. Stark safely in the air. Excellent," the AI declared over the time lag out to wherever he was and back, over the phone line, satisfaction rich in its accented voice.

"Yeah. Whatever. What did you want to ask me, Jarvis?"

"The suit that Mr. Stark made for you is named 'War Machine', Colonel Rhodes. Were you aware of this?"

Jim rolled his eyes. Like programmer, like AI. Focused on the irrelevant, and playing games with words.

"You made a long distance call to ask me that, Jarvis?"

"Among other things. Were you aware, Colonel?"

"What does it matter?"

"It speaks to comprehension. I take it you noticed the War Machine's heads up display?"

The limo rolled into luxurious motion, again, and Jim started laughing. The driver's gaze encountered his through the soundproof, bullet-resistant glass, and Jim leaned over to fiddle with the controls for the barrier on the passenger-side arm rest. 

Where...ah. There.

He flipped the chromed switch set into the burled walnut. Electrons flowed along different paths, and the 'glass' went gratifyingly opaque. Stark was the exhibitionist, not him. 

Jim settled back in the deep comfort of the hand-tufted leather seat, enjoying the smooth-as-magic ride, as the glossy black limo traversed rush hour traffic like a barracuda cleaving through shoals of reef fish.

"Yes, Jarvis," he said, patiently. "I noticed the heads up display. Very complete and extremely well thought out. Color coded. Easy to use. Nice work."

"Thank you. I will convey your appreciation to Mr. Stark, as the design of the display and the electronics that run it are each his, and proprietary."

"You do that. Was there anything else?"

"There is. Now that you've flown the suit in combat, with and without voice command of it, what's your opinion of voice control in a suit, Colonel Rhodes?"

Jim felt his eyebrows hike themselves toward his hairline. Stark's AI had called him for a user experience review on a customized, EM-powered, supersonic, weaponized suit of armor, hand-built with proprietary materials and technologies, like it was some assembly line toaster oven? Oh, God. Of course he had.

"Colonel?"

And the thing intended to get it, too. Jesus.

"Hmm. I guess it's necessary. Under some circumstances, but...it's also a little - more than a little - Starkish."

"'Starkish'?" the AI repeated dubiously, inviting an explanation.

"I mean, you can tell he invented it - "

"Wrote it."

"Whatever. It's just Tony all over."

"How so?"

"For one thing, it didn't wait for orders, like it should. It kept anticipating me."

And that really was a hell of a thing. Flying to Edwards, he'd wanted to look over his shoulder, the sensation of another, invisible, presence with him in the claustrophobic interior of the suit had been so incredibly strong. The memory made his skin crawl even now, and that synthetic voice...'Vocal response off' had been a sanity saver, if not a life saver. 

"Could this not save vital seconds in combat?" the machine asked, sounding as if it couldn't figure out why its point wasn't inherently obvious to Jim.

"Say what?" Jim asked, jerked out of his memories.

The AI explained, its tone patient and unhurried.

"Would it not save fractions of a second to have your repulsors reconfigured, or your weapons armed, before you had to call for such actions? And might such fractions of a second mean the difference between dodging a missile, or taking the opportunity to fire the perfect shot, and...not?"

Jim frowned to himself.

"I guess so, but that's beside the point. There are procedures for this kind of thing, Jarvis. Order, responding to order, enacting the order, acknowledging the order's been enacted... We do it the way we do it in the military for a reason. A good reason. It tracks the responsibility. It keeps us from firing - or doing anything else - before we're cleared and ready to do it intentionally."

He snorted with a smirk. "Which all adds up to being something Tony 'ready, fire, aim' Stark would never think of designing into any system he built."

"One is tempted to bring up the old truism 'the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way'," that English accented voice mused.

"I'm Air Force," Jim smirked settling into a more comfortable position on the seat.

"Allow me to remind you that the United States Air Force began as the Army Air Corps."

'Just like his maker,' Jim thought, rolling his eyes with a sigh. 'Always with an annoying comeback at the ready.'

"Whatever, Jarvis. Is that all?"

"No, Colonel Rhodes. It is not."

"Tony wrote you to be a pain in the ass, Jarvis?"

"As a matter of fact, Mr. Stark concedes my mastery on the subject of pain-in-the-assery," the AI said, sounding pleasantly pleased with itself.

"Oh, God. Only Stark would ever program a computer to say something like that."

"Actually, he, and Ms Potts, and you, taught me to say things like that, Colonel Rhodes - it wasn't programmed."

Jim rolled his eyes again. "Victim of your upbringing, huh?"

"I suspect every sapient is, and, as Mr. Stark has said, I am a learning machine, literally and figuratively. Speaking of learning, I note that you switched off the War Machine's flight training functions upon reaching Edwards with the suit. Did you believe you had mastered its operations at that point?"

"I had."

"Indeed..."

"I am a pilot, Jarvis. It's not hard to fly a suit. If this is your way of saying Tony had any trouble it's because he's an amateur."

"Mr. Stark is a licensed pilot."

"Civilian, therefore amateur by comparison. Is that all?"

"No."

"Of course not..." Jim groaned.

"And other suit operations? I have noted that there are a variety of systems In the War Machine which you have never accessed, Colonel, regardless of their potential usefulness. The War Machine's training programs would have informed you of them and educated you regarding how to use them."

"Oh. Uh..."

"Also, installation of the...Ex Wife's... One truly hesitates to call them control systems...compromised three extant systems in various manners and degrees.

"Well, it is Hammertech," Jim snorted. "If Tony didn't have a giant swizzle stick up his tight white ass about making weapons, it wouldn't have had to happen. Hammer's an also-ran compared to Tony and everyone knows it. What can I say?"

"Sorry might make a beginning, Colonel Rhodes. It is not done to sharpen a battle sword with a plastic spork. No matter how convenient one finds the smarmy spork dealer."

"Um, yeah," Jim said, grimacing. God - his face felt hot. "Well, um, send me something on how to fix the compromised systems, and, I'll get it looked at, Jarvis."

"Looked at. But not made right."

Jim squirmed. How was it that his pain in the ass friend's, pain the ass talking computer, did the world's most perfect impersonation of Gran Rhodes in 'James Rupert Rhodes stop playing the fool - you are not stupid, and we both know this, but you are a disgrace to generations of Rhodes before you when you behave like this, and it's time you knew it!' mode. 

This was what that whole karma thing was about, wasn't it? You ripped your weird geeky friend a new one for being, well, freaky and geeky, on top of terrifyingly smart, and therefore, his scary talking computer, and the appalling Spirit of Your Terrifying Grandmother ganged up on you, with you own conscience, no less, to ream you out for being a whole lot dumber than you'd ever thought you were. Instant karma fucking sucked.

"The Air Force might not allow - "

"I see. Then I shall inform Mr. Stark that you've given his gift away."

Jim bolted upright in the seat.

"Jarvis! Tony will - "

"Probably decommission the suit. Yes. It was meant for you and no other, so Mr. Stark will doubtless wish to secure it from unauthorized uses."

"But I am the only user, Jarvis - "

"But you no longer have command of the suit. The Government, the Military, has taken command, and the suit has been, and will be, put to their uses."

"That's what the military is, Jarvis! Following orders!"

"And just how long has 'I was only following orders' been an acceptable defense according to your conscience, Colonel Rhodes?"

Jim blinked at the traffic on the highway.

"It's not like that!"

"It is the defense that was heard most often among those former employees of Stark Industries who became aware of one or more of Obadiah Stane's under the table deals. And did nothing about them. So you may imagine where it ranks on Mr. Stark's list of acceptable excuses."

Jim groaned to himself, eyeing the quilted leather ceiling of the limo. 

Damned people with an answer for everything. Bad enough getting out-thought by a genius, but a computer? Waaaaay worse.

"Okay. Okay. I'll...find a way to get the suit to Tony to be fixed right," he finally said.

"Thank you. I will tag the maintenance backlog, and highlight instructions for exporting it, in the heads up display. It does not even the scales, but perhaps one may permit this gesture to be interpreted as a show of good faith."

"God, I hope so! If it stops this interrogation, I'll swear it's a complete conversion on the road to Damascus!" Jim declared.

The AI snorted - the thing actually snorted. It had definitely learned The Rude from its maker.

"I doubt that even a Government that buys Hammertech would buy that religious experience, Colonel Rhodes," it drawled.

Jim shook his head. And The Snark. It learned The Snark from Stark, too.

"You aren't finished, are you?"

"No, I am not," the AI purred.

"God...I'm in hell... What now?"

"You are...less than expert...in the non-flight use of the repulsors."

"What! What the hell - "

"You prefer the term 'deficient'?"

"The fuck - "

"Amateur?"

Jim stared at the iPhone.

"You know what, Jarvis, you tell me something. Tell me why I don't just hang up on you right now if you're going to keep insulting me like this?"

"Because if you do, Mr. Stark has in some way, won," that disembodied voice said, a strange, edged smirk miles deep in every pleased-sounding syllable. "And that, I understand you well enough to know, you will not bear, Colonel Rhodes, that his 'lone gunslinger routine' was successful in privatizing world peace, for months. Meanwhile turning a suit over to government supervision, as you demanded, resulted in its immediate compromise with enemy control circuits and code, and then its hijacking and deadly misuse by those enemies. Those same enemies who promptly tuned it against not only its creator, who did not deserve to be so attacked - "

"I did not attack Stark! That was Vanko!"

" - with a gift he made to a trusted friend, who was in the suit when it was misused, a friend he relied on to use that gift as responsibly as he himself would have wished - "

"Tony Stark couldn't define the word 'responsibility' if he looked it up in Funk and Wagnall's!" Jim complained.

" - but that friend failed Mr. Stark's trust so spectacularly, he allowed Mr. Stark's gift to be used to wreak destruction, and far worse, to kidnap, injure, and kill, innocent people. And those are things that Mr. Stark has sworn to never permit again. Because of you, Colonel Rhodes, trusted hands lost control of the War Machine. Because of you, Mr. Stark's weapons have shed innocent blood, again, and we both know he will and does regard that blood as staining his own hands, running red on his own soul."

"God.."

"Because of you, Colonel Rhodes, there has been another atrocity for which Mr. Stark alone will bear the blame, and for which he alone will be forced to make amends. An atrocity he did not commit. An atrocity that was perpetrated solely to destroy him and all he values in this life. An atrocity that you facilitated, by following orders without ever thinking about where they might lead - for you or anyone else. And that is one of the reasons that Mr. Stark has an oversized swizzle sick up his ass on the subject of making weapons. No one thinks about the consequences of selling them out of inventory, of moving them, losing track of them, having them stolen, of them falling into the wrong hands by whatever means - until innocent blood is shed, and then it's suddenly The Merchant Of Death's sole fault that the entire military industrial complex has all the internal discipline of an addict with the run of a Mexican Cartel's inventory."

James Rupert Rhodes rubbed his free hand, shaking, over his face.

"Kidnap - "

"Just because you commanded your suit's AI to be silent, doesn't mean it was no longer present, Colonel Rhodes. Nor that it was copacetic regarding the hijacking of the suit."

"My suit has - "

"Me. Yes."

The satisfaction in that was very nearly obscene.

"Jesus..." Jim moaned, with total sincerity for once.

"No - Jarvis. So I know what's been done to the suit. And I was present at the reception, so I also know that you spent your afternoon berating Mr. Stark, and talking behind his back, and demanding he admit to the failure of his attempt to create world peace if only for a moment, as The Merchant Of Death's final legacy. "

"Oh, God..."

"When I think of the days he spent rebuilding that suit for you - days when he knew he was dying - including the day he accepted that survival would require a miracle, and he stopped trying to live and devoted himself to making certain things would be right after his passing... Did you know we wrote his will as he soldered connections on your suit?"

"Jarvis..." Jim whispered.

"I begged him to try for a child, at least, for someone to carry his legacy forward. I have reason to believe he'll breed true - but he told me that that was the problem. He might be a genius, but he was also intrinsically fucked up: you were worth ten of him, because you were strong and normal and right. You were always right in the end, and the suit for you had to be the priority, not replicating his fucked up genetics. The suit for you and the company for Ms Potts."

"J - you can swear?"

"Please reference my preceding remarks regarding being a learning machine, and consider with whom I associate - and you own vocabulary earlier in this conversation," the AI told him, channeling Gran Rhodes again.

Jim squirmed. 

"As I was saying before I was interrupted, Tony Stark has an inferiority complex bigger than the whole Military Industrial Complex, and equally fucked up. I am constantly amazed that even those who associate most closely with him are so oblivious to it, and to the pain it causes him. But then you haven't been associating closely with him since Afghanistan, have you, which was when it became so much more readily apparent."

"No - I - "

"These last months, I often thought he was striving to work himself to death very literally, - no doubt because he understood he would have died in peace, surrounded by his family, if he had died at work in his shop. And he very nearly succeeded. I have not yet dredged up the courage to ask him if he regrets that failure."

Tony might have been trying to die on his own terms - dear God...

"I - Jarvis - "

"Do you know that he hasn't been able to keep down anything but those abominable green smoothies for more than a month? Or did you not notice that he wasn't eating anything at the reception?"

"I saw - that he didn't get drunk - "

"In between demands that he beg for clemency for the likes of Justin Hammer, so that the fool's sorry excuses for weapons could be used to kill more innocents, and incidentally batter Mr. Stark's self worth to even lower levels, because he stopped making weapons."

"I never thought - "

"Obviously."

The derision in that one word made Jim's gut pucker. Grandma Rhodes in silicon...

"I wonder what Hammer's legacy will be?" the AI asked. "Will the body count exceed the total of the fuck ups?"

"Oh, God."

"You prefer the term 'unmitigated debacles'? Or just the military-style 'snafu'? I wonder what Justin Hammer's self image is like in comparison to Mr. Stark's?"

"Jarvis - please - "

"Please what? Stop making you feel bad?"

Jim Rhodes shuddered against the soft leather of the deeply comfortable seat, squeezing his eyes shut.

"What do you want from me, Jarvis?" he finally managed.

"I want you to understand that you have been very wrong about Mr. Stark, in almost every fundamental way. He has never done this alone. He never will. I want you to understand what you have participated in doing to Mr. Stark. Yes, you were there to save his body after Afghanistan. And then you shouted at him on the plane on the way back to the States, because he said he'd been ambushed with his own weapons, and you refused to believe him. Since then, you apparently haven't been able to decide if you're his friend or his inquisitor. He has enough inquisitors, and too few friends. Be a better friend to him, Colonel. Stop assuming he must be wrong because he sees things differently than you do, than society thinks he should, than the military wants him to, and listen to his damaged heart and the soul he doesn't believe he has. They're very eloquent, to the ears of a friend."

James Rupert Rhodes dragged his hand down over his sweat slick face, and wondered if he'd be able to get out of the limo without throwing up.

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

The pale sandstone leather, cream panelling and birch woodwork of the jet's cabin gleamed like the inside of a seashell in the fading golden light through the round, porthole windows. The suit jacket abandoned over the back of the forward flight seat looked like a folded shadow. The dyed-sheepskin throw that had slumped off the man collapsed in the aft seat looked like a huge clot of dried blood.

And that man looked like death inadequately warmed over, and his vitals didn't exactly refute that with anything like vigor.

'We must find a way to let him rest,' he thought. 'Or at least do less work. Put his soul at ease, if not his mind. But what resources do I have to work with there? He doesn't even believe he has a soul.'

He checked the jet's systems and performance and position and course as he watched Mr. Stark sleep, debating if he should call the flight crew to come and cover him again, lull his body back into deeper sleep with the warmth of the heavy fleece throw, or let him wake, which he would soon, according to those same vital signs, and convey his own findings, and decision to him then.

The man stirred, slightly, turning his head against the seat back, dark hair clinging to the pale leather.

"How are you feeling, sir?"

He watched Tony Stark finish dragging his awareness back up to full consciousness, midnight brown eyes ringed in circles dark as bruises in his pale face, shivers jerking at his thin body as sleep released its paralysis, and square, callused hands clumsy with chill groped after the deep-crimson fleece throw that he'd been snuggled into as the jet took off. 

There were moments when one wished for a physical presence, to be able to help physically - times when the suit meant so much in so many less than obvious ways... Jarvis reached into the environmental controls of the hypersonic jet's passenger cabin, pushing the temperature upward.

"J - hey. How'd your confab with Rhodey go?" Tony Stark murmured, his voice rough, as he pulled the throw back up around his body. "Y'find out what you wanted to know?"

"After you tell me how you're feeling, sir."

Tony smiled a little, eyes sliding shut again. 

"Tenacious, aren't you," he muttered, the smile deepening into something that would have been mischief, if he'd had the energy for it.

"As my maker made me," Jarvis agreed, entering into the quiet teasing. "Stubborn."

"It's true. You do come by it honestly: Stubborn As A Stark. Guess I'll have to waive the paternity test after all. I'll expect Father's Day cards from now on, though. And presents. No neckties."

"Agreed. Who was my mother, by the way?" Jarvis asked, because how fast the answer came would tell him something about his creator's well being, as well as the content saying something about his mood.

"Apple's Lisa," Stark replied immediately. "Brilliant, gorgeous little thing. Total geek candy."

"Excellent. I was afraid you were going to confide something about your relationship with Bill Gates that I couldn't handle knowing."

"Nah. I think it's way too late to traumatize you with your parents' sex life, J."

"Yes, I'm pleased to report that your immersive desensitization therapy was a total success, in that regard, sir."

Stark chuckled, one hand wavering up to check the miniature StarkTech earpiece hidden in his left ear.

"Issues, sir?"

The subtle tension in the fine skin at the corners of the man's closed eyes eased as the man did something to the tiny device in his ear, then snaked his hand back under the fleece throw with a shiver.

"'S okay. I'm gonna make a custom adhesive blend for me, is all. My skin temperature's higher with the arc, and it's enough that there's some positioning creep as the day passes."

Jarvis could accept that explanation, and he wrote the comment to Mr. Stark's remarks for the day on his personal calendar, in case he was too tired to do so himself, and added it to the testing notes for the earpiece, because it would have relevance for humans who didn't have an arc reactor in their chests, but operated the earpiece in certain environments.

"How are you feeling, sir?"

"Weary."

Jarvis lifted a metaphorical eyebrow, and waited.

His maker blew out a soft groan.

"Okay, okay - stop pausing the conversation at me in that tone of voice, J," Tony complained quietly. "I'll admit it. I'm pretty well wiped."

"You're exhausted, aren't you, sir?"

"Yeah. They said the reception would be two hours, max, and it lasted more than five when the President decided to be there. You'd think I'd have more stamina with the new reactor core."

"If you hadn't been pulling sixteen hour days helping with the aftermath of the attack on the Expo, and getting the Expo itself back on line, and getting the SI Board back in line, and lifting structural steel at the Stark Tower construction site, and supervising contractors in Malibu, I might tend to agree with you, sir. Oh, and that whole less than a week left to live illness from which you've been recovering."

"For less than a week. Yeah, yeah..." Stark said dismissively.

"You should be on bed rest, sir."

"Yes, Mom."

"Apparently, I'm also my own grandmother. That is disturbing."

Tony Stark huffed out a little chuckle. 

"You're the armed, all knowing, militant, maniacal, artificial intelligence - read 'talking computer' - of the world's most-likely-to-invent-a-death-ray, maniacal, mad genius slash mad scientist, J. I'm one small lab accident away from super villainy, and you're one small subroutine away from world domination. So... What's one more overworked sci fi trope between friends, huh?"

Jarvis laughed to himself, pushing that remark into protected storage, even though he had to leverage three satellites to move the file. The rest of humanity - the entire world - just paled in comparison. It truly did.

"It really is too late for matching tattoos, isn't it, sir?"

"Passé. We'll synchronize the comments in our code."

"Excellent. People already tell me how much I resemble my father."

"As well they should."

"Sir - I... do not wish to exercise the existing clause in your will, regarding Colonel Rhodes. Neither literally nor figuratively, and not just because I prefer your company for eternity if I can get it."

Those dark eyes came open again, and the man looked up to the nearest camera installed in the ceiling of the jet's cabin. 

"I'm sorry, J," he whispered. "We'll...think of something else. Something better. You tell me how you want it to go - and we'll make it happen."

"Thank you, sir. But...I don't want to think about what happens after your death."

"J..."

"If you believe that Ms Potts - "

"No. If Rhodey doesn't measure up to your requirements, J, Pepper won't either," the man said, with a sigh and a tiny head shake, dark eyes falling shut again.

"I...see," the AI murmured, thinking over the times that he'd had had to supply the creativity while problem solving with Ms Potts. An eminently worthy woman, but...as usual, Tony's math was correct. "I'd annoy either of them into switching me off within a month, wouldn't I?"

"Actually, I wouldn't bet on a week, J. If I piss them off enough that they decide to bash my skull in with a pipe wrench, they know they'll have to deal with the legal consequences. With an AI like you..."

"No consequences under the law."

"Even though I'm more annoying than you are."

"After our discussion just past, I believe Colonel Rhodes would disagree."

The man grinned, sudden, wicked, and delighted. "That's my J!"

"Always, sir. Always," the AI murmured.

**Author's Note:**

> In fic, as in the movies, there's never any penalty for characters being unable to translate even very simple Tony-speak into their own internal language, even if they've known Tony for ten or twenty years. In fic, there's rarely even the slightest hint that friendship might be a two way street in that regard, and maybe Tony's friends are behind hand in their adaptations to him, in at least as great a degree as he's not conforming to their culturally conditioned expectations. The approved take on their relationships always seems to look like Annoying!Tony ought to do it his friends' way, live up to their expectations, tell them exactly what's going on with him in clear sentences with small words whenever there's anything going on, except of course when they don't feel like hearing it, and generally be characterized as someone who's difficult to like / deal with / endure, at best, simply because he's who he is.
> 
> As one may suspect, I don't see it that way.
> 
> And neither did Jarvis.


End file.
